City Power will extend working hours and suspend penalty fees for “non-vending” customers as it races to complete upgrades to prepaid electricity meters ahead of the token identifier (TID) rollover project deadline on Sunday.
Non-vending customers are prepaid electricity consumers who don’t buy electricity via approved channels. City Power’s service delivery centres across Johannesburg will remain open until 7pm from Thursday to address the backlog of meters that need upgrading.
“Our offices will also be open on Saturday and Sunday to allow our teams to continue attending to TID related queries,” said spokesperson Isaac Mangena.
City Power offered a grace period for non-vending customers between Thursday and Sunday, where it will help resolve TID inquiries, including the replacement of customers’ meters without any charging penalties.
“Ordinarily, it would cost about R14,000 for a single-phase meter and more than R30,000 for a three-phase meter to be replaced as a penalty for tampering. Given the present circumstances, City Power has decided to suspend the penalty fees, to ensure that each customer is accommodated,” Mangena said.
City Power said that while 99% of its vending prepaid meters had been upgraded there was still a handful of vending customers outstanding.
“On Monday, we were sitting with 1,061 customers whose meter upgrades were still pending, plus 119 that were partially upgraded,” Mangena said.
He said the utility now had 1,001 customers requiring upgrades. “Out of those outstanding customers, 562 are in Alexandra, where our technicians are still facing some reluctance from customers. However, we have noticed that the majority of those customers who are refusing to give us access to their properties are opting to visit our service delivery centres to seek assistance with upgrades.”
City Power also had about 255 meters outstanding in Midrand.
Mangema said most of the customers were visiting City Power’s head office in Reuven, Booysens. He advised them to visit their nearest centre instead to long queues at the head office.
“We also encourage all outstanding customers to use the do-it-yourself method to complete the upgrade as an alternative. By purchasing electricity units, customers with unconverted meters will receive three 20-digit token codes, the last of which is the unit token code [to be used to upgrade the meter],” he said.
TimesLIVE
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